


Vigil

by Uniasus



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Arthur's inaction dooms them all, BAMF Druids, Character Death, Gen, Magic Reveal, Season 2, i guess a bit of angst, maybe more than a bit, more specifially, right after Sigan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-17
Updated: 2016-10-17
Packaged: 2018-08-22 23:08:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8304739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Uniasus/pseuds/Uniasus
Summary: There are Druids at the edge of the wood, standing solomon with balls of light. A vigil, Gwen thinks, and Arthur tries not to think of Merlin locked in the cells.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Super quick thing I wrote tonight because I need self-affirmation and getting kudos does it for me. Or something. This weekend has been a mess.
> 
> Regardless, this takes place almost immediately after the Sigan episode (S02E01) with the idea that it might have been night, but that courtyard was pretty visible and open. It's worth noting, I'm running with the idea that Gaius/Merlin keep Cedric's possession a secret. Because a jewel capable of possessing someone is not an item I see Uther causally resealing.

Arthur leaned against the stone wall, staring out the window. Sunset, but he wasn’t paying attention to the colors. He was trying to understand his manservant.

Ex-manservant, as Merlin was in a cell several floors below and scheduled to be executed. Not the next morning, the courtyard was still in shambles from the gargoyles coming to life, but soon.

After all, there’d been witnesses. Knight and guards looking in, people peeking from the windows.

Merlin escaped from the dungeons and decided to face the sorcerer Cedric. How Arthur had failed to realize Cedric was a sorcerer, he still didn’t know. Then again, Merlin had hid under his nose for a year.

It didn’t matter. People had seen Merlin and Cedric battle. Cedric sent a blue light streaming towards Merlin, who either absorbed it, sent it back, or trapped it in a crystal depending on the tale-teller. Cedric either dropped dead, was hit with a bolt of magic, or had his soul sucked out of him. The details didn’t matter. What did was the gold eyes the witnesses saw and the undeniable fact that only magic could defeat magic.

Merlin was a sorcerer.

Arthur still reeled from that revelation.

He expected, like before, for Merlin to use his powers to escape, but the warning bell stayed silent.

* * *

Arthur went down to see Merlin the next morning. He stayed in the hallway, looking between the bars at Merlin. The boy hadn’t noticed Arthur, he sat looking up through the small grate at the bit of sky. There was straw in his hair, his hands manacled in front of him. He sat on the straw, not like a man condemned to death, but of one simply waiting.

For what, Arthur didn’t know. He couldn’t raise the courage to ask and left before Merlin noticed him watching.

* * *

Leon caught his eye during training and Arthur lingered when it was over to talk to him.

“Camps sprung up during the night.”

“Enemy camps?”

“We’re not sure. They’re all Druids, but they’re in the woods. Not visible from the walls, and they’ve made no move to approach the city.”

“Watch them, but take no action. And if you can, figure out why they’re here.”

* * *

That evening, Arthur leaned against the wall again. He tried to structure an argument to present his father with that would save Merlin’s life. Merlin had saved Camelot. He could escape at any time, yet stayed. He submitted to Camelot’s laws. He’d drunk poison for Arthur. He had so many opportunities to attack, yet hadn’t.

What he wanted to say, that Merlin was his friend, that’d he’d hate Uther for killing him, that Arthur didn’t want to see harm come to Merlin, he couldn’t put into the proper words. Uther would dismiss them. Worse, declare Arthur enchanted, lock up him where he couldn’t help and accelerate Merlin’s death.

He was so deep in his words it took him a while to notice just what he was seeing. Lights. Faint, like the windows of a tavern through the fog, but steady. Curious, even as a sense of dread dropped into his stomach, Arthur grabbed a cloak and made his way to the wall.

Morgana stood there with Gwen. Both women glared at Arthur on Merlin’s behalf. Arthur slide closer to Leon.

“What is it?” Arthur asked.

“I’m not sure, sire. I sent a group of knights out to find out.”

The four of them waiting on top of the gate until the knights returned.

“It’s the Druids, sire,” Lamorak said. “They’re standing there with small balls of light.”

“Just standing?” Arthur asked.

“Standing and staring at the citadel.”

Arthur frowned. “Keep an eye on them, but don’t attack. They aren’t doing any harm.”

“Just making me nervous,” Leon admitted.

Arthur nodded. He felt unsettled too.

His leniency with the Druids went a long way to soothe Morgana’s ire. They linked arms as they returned to the castle, Gwen dogging their footsteps.

“What do you think they’re doing?” Morgana asked.

No need to ask who _they_ were. “No clue,” Arthur admitted.

“It felt like a vigil,” Gwen whispered.

A vigil. Arthur mulled over the word. Gwen was right, it had felt like a vigil. The silent standing, the muted lights. But what would they be standing vigil for?

* * *

Before heading to his chambers, Arthur snuck back into the dungeons. Merlin slept, curled almost pathetically in a ball. The manacles were next to his wrists, not on them, and Arthur stared at him. He could escape. Why hadn’t he? Arthur wanted Merlin to escape.

There should be no need for a vigil, no matter for whom.

Arthur fingers itched to unlock the cell door, but he walked away. Merlin stayed for reason. Arthur wished he knew what.

* * *

The lights were visible again the next sunset. More of them, thicker, as the Druids stood in the trees. More had come during the day, Arthur guessed, though no patrols had reported an increase in number.

Tonight, children stood too. Arthur thought he glimpsed Anhora and a unicorn.

Like the night before, the lights and Druids stayed unwavering through the night.

Arthur wished he knew why.

* * *

Uther had seen the lights both nights and hated them. “Why they’re mourning this sorcerer instead of others, I don’t know, but I will not have it. As soon as the first light appears tonight, that servant will burn.”

Arthur put the most derelict of guards of duty. He hoped Morgana, Gwen, or Gaius would help Merlin escape. He hoped Merlin would escape himself. He hoped his father would give him a bit of free time.

Nothing.

Dusk fell. Merlin was tied to the pyre post.

He looked at Arthur once, hope and disappointment together. Arthur looked away. Merlin closed his eyes. The fire was lit.

Uther had instructed the pyre to be large, to be made of dry wood. He also insisted, since the courtyard was a mess, for it to be built on one of the larger towers. Arthur knew it was so the Druids would see Merlin burn. He was thankful it meant a fast, quick fire. Merlin’s death would be as quick as a burning could be.

The flames reached upwards and Arthur knew exactly when the Druids knew what was happening. The small balls of blue light they held turned into tall burning pillars of flames. They flickered the same way Merlin’s pyre did.

Arthur didn’t know who did it, but after the first tall explosion of fire, Merlin’s neck snapped. Mercy, compared to the fire.

It was a traitorous thought, but Arthur wanted to thank whoever did it.

* * *

The next morning was appropriately grey and dreary. Somehow, the Druid flames left the trees untouched. Arthur wished they hadn’t. He wanted long lasting evidence of what happened to Merlin. Of others keeping vigil for him even though Arthur couldn’t for fear of his father’s wrath.

Merlin burned. It seemed appropriate Camelot felt the scaring of that, the same way Arthur did.

Why had Merlin not escaped?

That afternoon, three Druids appeared in the council chambers to disrupt the meeting taking place. They kept their hoods down, but beneath their cowls Arthur could see hard mouths and golden eyes.  One of them knocked half the guards down. Another cast a shield. The third step forward to address Uther.

“We were patient, Uther Pendragon, waiting for the right time to arrive and you have benefited from our pacificity. But no more. You will never treat us as we want to be treated. You will never see us equals. If Emrys could not set Albion in motion,” here the Druid turned to Arthur, “Then what hope have we. We have discarded the prophecies. We no longer believe in the Once and Future King. And so we speak now with the words and habits you know and understand.

“Here this, Uther Pendragon and Arthur Pendragon. Here this, all of Camelot. You have killed our leader, our prince, our king. By the law of all the kingdoms, we declare war in retribution. Camelot will fall beneath the might of the Druids. We will take our freedom, and you will feel the heat of the pyre.

“We will give one day to allow those who wish for sanctuary to ask for it. For those of our kind in the city to join the fight. This time tomorrow, the weight of the Old Religion will crush you.”

They disappeared as quickly as they appeared and room burst into chaos.

* * *

Arthur wanted no part in planning for the coming war. He didn’t know if he hated or welcomed it, didn’t know if he wanted revenge for Merlin to be had or worried about his people more. Though, a good deal of the city tried to flee once the Druid’s proclamation spread. If they had Druid connections or not, Arthur didn’t know, but he did not resent his people leaving.

He did resent his father for locking the gates. Arthur tried to help Morgana and Gwen lead people through the tunnels, but his absence was noted. He was forced to plan, to hear the stories of previous wars fought with magic and the strategies used then, to realize that Camelot was doomed.

Why hadn’t Merlin fled? Why had he, a Druidic prince, subjected himself to be Arthur’s servant? What, exactly, had the Druids been waiting for and given up on? How had Merlin been so crucial to those plans? Why had the Druids not rescued Merlin if so much depended on him?

He hated the thought of not knowing his best friend. Of all these questions. But understood with horrifying hindsight Merlin’s secrets should have stayed secret.

* * *

The attacks were quick. Fierce. Violent. Someone released the dragon under the castle and a dragonlord appeared to direct its damage. Stone melted. People dropped dead.

In a matter of hours, a few hundred Druids invaded Camelot, destroyed it’s defenses and captured the king. They demolished the monarchy, declared a council of Druids and Priests and Priestess, and gave a victory speech so stirring and perfect Arthur’s heart ached.

They talked of what he knew he wanted from the moment he knew of Merlin’s magic. A Camelot of equality, of freedom and neighborly aid.

Camelot had been destroyed in a day and overnight it had been rebuilt into a better city. The stone work repaired without the cracks, the windows in rainbow hues, the mud homes with leak proof roofs.

Arthur looked for but a moment upon the Camelot he wanted to rule before being tossed into the same cell Merlin had been kept in.

* * *

True to their word, the Druids burned Uther alive. Uther hadn’t dismantled Merlin pyre, and so he was tied to it and burned in a grim version of poetic justice. No one provided mercy to Uther, not like someone had given Merlin.

Arthur watched his father choke on ash and flame and cried.

When it was his turn, when a Druid tied Arthur to the post, he asked the questions he wanted to know. “Why did you not free Merlin? Why did he not free himself?”

“Because,” said the cold blonde Priestess with a nose like Morgana’s. “He believed in your destiny, Arthur Pendragon, like we believed in his. Emrys turned away all forms of aid, expecting you to stand up and save him.”

She dropped the torch at Arthur’s feet. “Uther’s hatred was too strong, his madness and stubbornness to great. We will remove that taint forever.”

Arthur burned with the ashes of his father and best friend scattered at his feet.

**Author's Note:**

> Please don't ask where this story came from, because I don't know either. I just wanted to play with the consequences of Uther killing a secret royal, I guess. 
> 
> I assure you all, Veritas will not be this depressing. Well, for Merlin anyway?


End file.
